How economic and geographical indicators affect dietary environmental footprint: Evidence from China

Abstract

A sustainable diet is widely recognized as an effective way to solve environmental and healthy dilemmas. Due to economy improvement, food consumption is undergoing a dietary transition toward more animal-based products. However, very few studies explored how geographical locations are correlated with dietary environmental footprints. Here, we quantified the per capita ecological footprint (EFP) and Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of Chinese people’s food consumption during the 2015 to 2020 period. Our results showed that the southern residents with high per capita disposable income (PCDI) showed the highest EFP (0.596 ha) and GHG emissions (1946 kgCO2eq), and the northern residents with low PCDI showed the lowest EFP (0.368 ha) and GHG emissions (1260 kgCO2eq). The overconsumption of meat is severe in China, and southern high PCDI residents annually consumed 116.7% more than they need. The EFP and GHG emissions were significantly related to geographical locations (i.e., southern and northern areas), direct economic indicators (i.e., PCDI and food expenditure), and indirect economic indicators (i.e., urban and rural status, and East-Central-West areas) (all p < 0.01). We also showed that though not significant, the correlation coefficient between geographical locations and EFP (r = 0.52) exceeded the coefficient between direct economic indicators and EFP (r = 0.44/0.48), while both coefficients mentioned above were significantly higher than the coefficient between indirect economic indicators and EFP (r = 0.32/0.31). These findings suggest that, besides economic indicators, more attention should be paid to the geographical locations and the related dietary cultures to reduce the environmental impacts not only in China but also in other countries with distinct regional differences.